Eight practical guides and four how-to videos on designing anti-oppressive research — free, open, and yours to adapt. No email required. Nothing gated.
Traditional research and evaluation models centre institutional priorities, extract community labour, and reproduce the inequality they claim to address. These resources exist for organisations who want to do it differently, and need something concrete to work from.
Use what is useful. Adapt what is needed. Credit the source. Care for people first.
THE GUIDES
Eight guides. Click to download.
Shared under a Creative Commons licence — adapt them, share them with partners, use them in training. Credit the source and don't present them as your own.
GUIDE 1
Rethinking Evidence
Why research design matters — the politics of evidence and community accountability.
GUIDE 2
Designing Trauma-Informed Research
Build safety, choice and care into every stage of research.
GUIDE 3
Intersectionality in Community Research
Design research that recognises overlapping identities and names systems of power.
GUIDE 4
Creative & Grassroots Methods Toolkit
Photovoice, community mapping, story circles and arts-based approaches.
GUIDE 5
Co-Analysis & Collective Sense-Making
Share power in interpreting data and making meaning.
GUIDE 6
Co-Design in Research
Move from consulting communities to co-creating with them, from design through to dissemination.
GUIDE 7
Resisting Funder Extraction
Meet reporting demands without erasing community voice, and report on your own terms.
GUIDE 8
Knowledge Justice & Community Archiving
Protect community knowledge beyond grant cycles.
Adapt these. Don't follow them.
Every community and organisation is different. These guides offer principles, tools and prompts — not a fixed model. You are the expert on what will work in your context.
Questions worth asking as you adapt: what does trauma-informed practice look like in our community? Which methods will resonate culturally with the people we work with? What barriers — language, trust, capacity — do we need to address? What funder or institutional constraints are we navigating?
Each guide is a standalone two to three page resource. Read them in any order, share them with staff or community members, use them as training materials, or reference them when designing proposals.
THE VIDEOS
Four short videos. Captioned, with slides.
Step-by-step walkthroughs with examples from real community research practice. Each has closed captions, and the slides are downloadable as PDFs. If you hit an accessibility problem, write to us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
Access the Videos
We've created four short videos explaining different approaches to integrating equity-centred practices into your research and learning practice.
Each video has closed captions and PDFs are available. If you come across any issues regarding accessibility, please drop us an email at [email protected]
Video 1: Introduction to Critical Participatory Action Research
Research as a tool for change, not just understanding.
This video offers a clear introduction to Critical Participatory Action Research. It traces CPAR’s roots in liberation struggles and popular education, and explains what makes it different from traditional participation. You’ll leave with a grounded sense of when CPAR is appropriate, what it asks of researchers, and what it makes possible for communities.
Video 2: Intersectionality, Power and Research
How power shows up in research design, data, and decisions.
This video introduces intersectionality as a research lens, not a buzzword. It looks at how race, gender, class, disability, migration status, and age shape who is heard, what counts as evidence, and whose lives are misrepresented. You’ll learn how to design research questions and methods that do not flatten people’s realities.
Video 3 : Creative Methods
Using images to tell stories research often silences.
This video introduces Photovoice as a community-led, political method rooted in organising and resistance. It covers ethics, power, consent, and safety, alongside practical steps for using photography to surface lived experience, challenge dominant narratives, and support collective action — not extractive storytelling.
Video 4: Co-Analysis
Where meaning is made — and power is usually taken back.
This video focuses on co-analysis as a justice practice. It explores how to involve participants in interpreting findings, sense-making, and narrative building. You’ll learn simple ways to ask “Did we get this right?” and to treat analysis as a shared, relational process rather than a technical task.
Access the Research Guides
Click on the icons below to download each of the research guides.
Click below to access each resource guideWHERE THIS CAME FROM
Built with practitioners, across eight cohorts.
These resources come from the Research Design for Social Impact programme — eight cohorts delivered between 2023 and 2025 to more than 175 practitioners across four continents.
Six of those cohorts ran as a Continuing Professional Development strand of the Social Transformation and Advocacy through Research (STAR) project at the University of East London and the University of Bristol, funded by the Office for Students and Research England. STAR exists to disrupt barriers to research participation for Global Majority communities and historically underserved groups. Two further global cohorts brought participants from Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean.
Grounded in the work of others
These guides draw on decades of thinking by Black feminist scholars (Kimberlé Crenshaw, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks), Indigenous scholars and knowledge keepers (Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Shawn Wilson), participatory action researchers (Paulo Freire, Orlando Fals-Borda, Budd Hall), and disability justice activists (Mia Mingus, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha).
And on the communities who have resisted extraction, demanded dignity, and built knowledge systems rooted in care and liberation. This work would not exist without them.
Acknowledgements & Grounding
This resource pack draws on decades of work by:
- Black feminist scholars (Kimberlé Crenshaw, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks)
- Indigenous scholars and knowledge keepers (Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Shawn Wilson)
- Participatory action researchers (Paulo Freire, Orlando Fals-Borda, Budd Hall)
- Disability justice activists (Mia Mingus, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha)
- Community organisers and grassroots movements (too many to name, but we honour you)
This work would not exist without the communities who have resisted extraction, demanded dignity, and built knowledge systems rooted in care and liberation.
Join the 2027 waitlist
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
These resources are offered in the spirit of collective learning, care and accountability — not compliance.
Who are these resources for?
Can we adapt or reuse these materials?
Do we need prior research experience to use this pack?
Does this replace formal ethical approval or safeguarding processes?
Does this cover every research situation?
What if a resource brings up difficult or sensitive issues?
Design for Social Impact has worked with dozens of organisations, including:
